Once upon a time, there was a young man who got his dream job in the financial services industry, thought he could make it big one day and worked hard at it, then got disillusioned and disgusted by what he saw around, and finally quit to live a life of greater peace and fulfillment, while pursuing his passion in value investing.

If I had not read Guy Spier’s The Education of a Value Investor, and someone told me this story, I would have believed it was mine.

This is truly my story, but Guy has captured this beautifully in his wonderful book, which I completed reading recently.

Of course, Guy gas written about his personal story, but it resonated so much with me that I have kept this book in my must-read book advisory list for any budding value investor.

Of course, there are great differences between me and Guy –

• He studied at Oxford and Harvard while I studied at obscure colleges;
• He won a lunch date with Warren Buffett (jointly with Mohnish Pabrai, at a cost of US$ 650,000), while I continue to dream of a visit to Omaha to meet the Oracle some day;
• He started and ended his career at an investment bank, and I did it with an independent research house.
• He now manages multi-million dollars, while I barely manage to manage my own little savings. 🙂

Anyways, coming back to Guy’s story and his book, as I mentioned, I could relate to a lot of his experiences, thoughts, and lessons. I have pulled out just five of them that have guided me well.

These thoughts not only hold importance in investing but in life as well. In fact, I find Guy’s book amazing because it talks less about value investing rules and more on a value investor’s character development.

In Guy’s own words…

…this book is also about the inner game of investing, and by extension, the inner game of life. As I’ve come to discover, investing is about much more than money. So as your wealth grows, I hope you will also come to realize that the money is largely irrelevant. And what you will want to do with the bulk of your wealth is give it back to society.

So, here are those five meaningful thoughts that Guy writes about in his book, which I believe serve a great learning for most people aspiring to find a greater meaning in life and become better as value investors.

[Read more…]

If the history of stock market is anything to go by, investors often make decisions that can undermine their ability to build long-term wealth. As such, it is often very valuable to look back in history and study closely the principles that have guided the investment decisions of some of the best minds and practitioners in this field through both good and bad markets.

By studying these experienced investors, we can learn many important lessons about the mindset required to build long-term wealth.

With this goal in mind, here is a special e-book that aims to offer the wisdom of some of the best investment minds of current times from India and abroad.

[Read more…]

Stop right here if you are looking for a stock idea from me, because most of my multibagger ideas are outside the stock market. 😉

But if you are still reading this, you may be interested to know the multibagger Diwali idea I am going to share. Don’t you?

Well, it’s festival time and I won’t waste much of yours.

My multibagger idea for this Diwali is to start a chain of gifting books that inspire.

I am starting with gifting one book that has inspired me to one person I know. I expect that person to then pay it forward by gifting one book to one of his or her friends, and the chain continues…till someone does not want to gift the book. 🙂

You don’t have to wait for someone to send you a book before you can begin.

Mahatma Gandhi said, “Be the change you want to see in this world.” So today I urge you to start the chain you want to be a part of. Anyone reading this can start his or her own chain. Trust me, you can’t even imagine how far the ripple effects of your small act can reach.

Pay It Forward

Lily Hardy Hammond wrote, “You don’t pay love back; you pay it forward.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson, in his 1841 essay titled Compensation, wrote, “In the order of nature we cannot render benefits to those from whom we receive them, or only seldom. But the benefit we receive must be rendered again, line for line, deed for deed, cent for cent, to somebody.”

Same is with knowledge. The only way you can pay back for the knowledge you have received is to pay it forward. Become a funnel, says Prof. Sanjay Bakshi, not a sponge.

One way to do that is to teach someone what you have learned. The other is to simply gift a good book.

But then, how does gifting a book make for a multibagger idea?

Well, knowledge, as you would have heard Warren Buffett say a lot of times, builds like compound interest. And because knowledge builds like compound interest, it gives you an exponential return. And what causes an exponential return makes for a multibagger over time.

Now, when you get a book as a gift, and you read it, it adds to your knowledge. And when you pay it forward by gifting a book to someone else and that person reads it, it adds to his/her knowledge. Over time, as a society, we get more knowledgeable and hopefully wiser. And that’s the idea of starting this chain.

So this Diwali, read a book…gift a book…and spread the light of wisdom all around you.

Anshul and I wish you a very happy Diwali and prosperous New Year.

P.S.: To ensure that this movement benefits maximum number of people, gift the book to someone who isn’t part of this already. So Anshul and I, by default, shouldn’t be in your chain.